The Man Behind 90210's Coolest Teacher

If all teachers were as cool as West Beverly's Ryan Matthews, we'd all be signing up for extra credit. Thankfully, the man behind the scruffy sarcasm, Ryan Eggold, makes the grade as well. Here, the 90210star tells which student is going to be crushing on him and why he'd love to be in a bar fight.

TV Guide: Tell me about Ryan…Ryan Eggold: Well, I'm a Scorpio…

TV Guide: The character!Eggold: Oh yeah…. He's a young literature teacher, just out of college, so he's got a lot of spunk, you know? He's a bit rebellious, rambunctious…puckish is the word I'm gonna use from now on. [Laughs]

TV Guide: He's gonna be a pain in the ass for Harry.Eggold: Oh yeah, he is. They're gonna butt heads.

TV Guide: But overall, a good guy?Eggold: You know he comes from a similar sort of town as Beverly Hills on the East Coast — it's yet to be decided which one — so he was bit of a wild child. He bought into a really fast lifestyle and he's gone the other way now because he hit a dead-end. So he wants to instill in these kids a real sense of character.

TV Guide: So then which student is gonna have the crush on you?Eggold: [Laughs] The character of Adriana, she starts coming after me. I think her character feels that she has nowhere else to turn to, so she needs help, but she's using him for a sexual something.

TV Guide: This being 90210, Ryan's gotta have some dark issues, right?Eggold: He may be a bit of an ex-drug addict. I think his demons are mostly conquered, but what will be exciting will be if something can un-conquer them…if he came across some sort of stress that brings him to a weaker, more vulnerable place where those things start coming up again.

TV Guide: Will he be interacting with Harry beyond the school? Or his wife?Eggold: I would love to interact with Lori Loughlin…all day long. Is that wrong?

TV Guide: Were you a fan of the original?Eggold: I was more the Saved by the Bell era. I wanted to be Zack Morris so bad, you have no idea, dude. I was trying to do his "time outs" at school and it never worked! [Laughs]

TV Guide: But here you get to work with Shannen Doherty.Eggold: And I love that she has that aura. There's a part of me that idolizes guys like Mickey Rourke…I don't know, it feels like that's gonna happen to me someday [Laughs].

TV Guide: Have any fights in public yet? Eggold: Probably in a couple of years, I'll get drunk in a bar and punch someone. It'll be all over the news.